Male Bonding, In It's Weird Forms
by HarvestMoonRacoon
Summary: What goes on behind closed doors at Akatsuki.. should stay behind them. Jokingly implied ZetsuTobi, but no yaoi. LONG OVERDUE, I KNOW.


**Author's Note: Yes, Tessa, I KNOW it's overdue- But, do you know how hard it is to write a Zetsu/Tobi with no Zetsu/Tobi in it? I hope I hit close enough to yaoi to satisfy you, because I don't do gay guys. They scare me. The buttsex make their voices high, and they walk like they have pokers up their asses. Well, anyway, hope you like it! Rythmic gymnastic have always made me laugh. As well as the thought of Zetsu performing it.**

"What do you think they're doing in there anyway, un?"

Kisame gave the back of Deidara's head a 'Well, Duh' look, even as the artist continued to stare at the door that two of his cell members had passed through only oh-so-recently, blonde hair reeking of the beer that had sloshed out of his mouth.

"Um, I assumed _everyone_ knew tha-" the Mist-nin began, glancing confusedly at the set of hearts and spades clasped in a fan shape before him.

"Please. Don't try to explain it to him." Sasori growled from Kisame's left, rolling the Stogie between his teeth anxiously as he glared up at his blue acquaintance. A cloud of blue, marshmallow-scented smoke puffed from the puppet master's nose as he snorted a drag out to punctuate the command, giving him the appearance of a restrained, icily silent dragon.

Itachi simply rolled his eyes at the spectacle, and slapped down a Full House between the half-drank cans of flat soda and scattered popcorn that populated the card table.

It was a tradition for the first four members of the Akatsuki that they'd upheld every Sunday night since the cult had made it's humble beginnings: 6 p.m sharp, it was Gin and Poker over beers and Wise potato chips, talking, joking, arguing. Deidara always brought a few Navels, and Sasori brought his good stash of cigars- not Zetsu's wimpy cigarettes, no. Real, 100 special-brand Stogies, as thick as an Empire-State Building Souvenir pencil. Top this with a container of hunter's beef jerky, a handful of black licorice, some sour Gummy worms, and ten or eleven bowls of Extra Butter popcorn, and you had the regular Original-Akatsuki-get-together. This was very much the scene tonight, with one exception that had become rather normal for various members over the past few weeks. Namely, since Tobi had been inducted as "Akatsuki Member In Training".

"Or, better yet, enlighten him. Why make us suffering his redundant questions any longer?" Itachi suggested, gazing at Deidara in anticipation for the artist's hand of cards.

Sasori instantly hurled a shadowy, venomous glare in the Uchiha's direction, before snapping his own hand of a mismatching array of unconnected numbers to the table, signaling that he had humiliatingly lost the round.

Deidara continued to bend himself over the back of his chair, eyes riveted to the wooden door from where music was blaring at a level that was guaranteed to shatter one's eardrums should they be dumb enough to step close enough to the room and listen for a prolonged period of time.

"Nah. I don't think Deidara ever got that part of his education." Kisame commented, clapping his tongue against his teeth. Yep: Itachi had this round. Beside being a mercenary of a ninja, good-looking to a fault, and an all-around lady's man, Itachi wrote the freakin' _book_ on playing Poker.

"Nor does he need to be informed of such a knowledge. At least not in my presence." Sasori added dryly, crossing his arms over his chest and sending another puff of grey smoke from beneath a curled lip.

It really didn't take a genius to see what was going on- but, than again, Deidara couldn't claim to be a genius by any strain of the word. Zetsu and Tobi- two people, whom the foursome had always thought mildly sane- disappear into a room for about an hour while music blares at an inhumanly loud decibel, and emerge sweaty, panting, and covered in bruises. Not to mention the skin-tight clothing they were both trying to conceal beneath their cloaks. Everyone saw it, while the Leader simply shrugged, and said something about he had to get back to his paperwork. They'd all just become used to having their card game interrupted by- get this- waltzes, Beethoven's Fourth, and other great works of classical music, and were tolerating it remotely well. Except for Deidara, who could never leave anything alone without agitating the issue further.

"You know, I'd have never thought Tobi would swing that way, un." Deidara lamented, his ponytail shaking as the Rock-nin shrugged hopelessly.

Eyebrows around the card table raised as Sasori snapped up the pile of cards, including Deidara's unrevealed hand, and began shuffling them as though they had stolen his mother's purse. Oh, so he _did _comprehend what was occurring behind the formerly-abandoned room's door. Deidara comprehending them couldn't be said for most things, after all. It was naturally a shock to them all.

"I knew Zetsu was a creep, too, but never that much." Kisame sighed, poking his fingers together underneath the pine table in a Hinata fashion. More than being a "creep", Zetsu was just weird. Of _course_ he was gay. It was an unwritten law. A bird will always decide to poop on your car just after you wash it, Hidan will always choose the middle of your favorite program to begin performing some stupid and very loud monk chant, and the guy with a plant on his head will always be homosexual. It never failed.

"Gay people always pick the weirdest people to be attracted to.", which was also an unwritten law.

"Opposites attract, I suppose." Sasori dulelly noted as he tilted his chair onto it's back legs and swept both broad-sleeved hands behind his head. Training his deep-orange eyes to the ceiling, the Suna Shinobi lolled his cigar in his mouth lethargically. He had a puppet to repair, and Deidara had put a frog in his bed that Sasori would need to remove and replace into his annoying partner's sleeping pallet before he retired for the night. Those annoying Green Beast Optimist Kooks had sent him some _more_ junk mail that he would need to shred, and there was an annoying little Hispanic girl with freckles and a crush on him trying to dig her way into the Fortress from the outside. He had a full night ahead of him, but duty called for a few hours of Gin with his partners.

Itachi nodded sagely, while Kisame sucked his lip into his mouth and accepted his next hand of playing cards. It was an awkward subject to discuss, really- Zetsu and Tobi's personal lives and preferences, but it was something guys spoke of among guys, and it wasn't like nobody else was aware of what was occurring. They might as well talk of it, seeing as it was happening right underneath their noses.

"But, gay people in particular always choose the most unlikely guy to love- I mean, even teenage _fan girls_ probably haven't paired Zetsu and Tobi yet-"

"Maybe they're not gay, un." Deidara interrupted.

Three heads trained directly to their idiotic team member's form, thoughts of murder and extreme torture with the spiny weeds that Deidara was allergic to filling their brains.

"Of _course_ they're gay, you stupid Norbert. You're even stupider than that- I'm sorry, those _two_ fangirls jumping around outside of the hidden entrance." Sasori growled, before hiding his face behind his fan of yet another poor hand.

"Well, maybe they're not- doing that, un. Did you ever think of that, un?" Deidara asked innocently, turning around gaze intently into his team member's eyes, searching them with a chibi reminiscent glint in the corners.

"No." Itachi answered, before plucking a beer off of the table and sipping idly. That was where Kisame dominated, however. It would take about four days of straight liquor to get Kisame drunk, whereas Itachi was getting dizzy after a sip of a wine cooler. Itachi could have been drunk under the table by a little old lady with glucose problems. Oh, well- every Superman had a kryptonite, and one thing that made him pretty un-cool.

"I'm gonna go see." came the explanation from the blond artist, before Deidara's chair squeaked and he began to swish across the linoleum towards the deafening waves of classical music.

Kisame sent Itachi a desperate look from his position at the Uchiha's right, while Sasori nearly fell out of his chair from the shock of Deidara's declaration. Itachi, presiding at the head of the card table, simply shrugged, and continued organizing his hand of cards as though Deidara weren't about to view something so horribly dissolute that he would likely be requesting one of Sasori's Stogies so that he could gouge out his eyeballs.

"Oh, no. You can't be serious." came the Isonade's response, as the Shark-nin stared at the Iwa-nin over his handful of aces and spades. He looked back to Itachi to see if perhaps he would put Deidara under the Mangeyokou long enough for them all to tie the artist up and cart him to the nearest village for a good psychiatric check-up. Geez, even a malicious _pervert_ wouldn't want to see Tobi and _Zetsu_- Augh! It was too despicable to think about for too long. It gave Kisame all sorts of sick, twisted ideas. He'd bet that even the blue-haired teenager who had been stalking him every time he set foot outside of the Underground fort hadn't even thought of that. As of now, the two girls seemed to have joined forces, and were, together, trying to tunnel their way into the citadel. However, there were bigger things to worry about here. Like the existence of Deidara's eyeballs. The innocent artist would likely be pouring acid onto them to wash out the visions of their two team mates doing the- Ew! He _had_ to stop thinking about this…

"Yeah, un. I wanna see what they're doin-" Deidara began, striding across the 1950's diner pattern on the linoleum.

"We _know_ what they're doing. Get back here before I sic one of my puppets on you." snarled the table's smoker, who proceeded to bob his Stogy and send a flight of ashes dancing through the still, uninterrupted air of the Akatsuki's painfully chic kitchen.

"How about we make this interesting, un?"

There was an audible perking noise as the three men glanced up at Deidara in perfect succession., their eyebrows nearing the edges of their hairlines.

Deidara gave a snarling smile, before reaching into one of his black and red patterned cloak's inner pockets and withdrawing a thick, flapping pile of dollar bills.

"If they're doing the nasty thing, you guys win, and I lose my twenty five bucks, un. But, if they're not, _you_ guys have to pay up, un- 25 dollars to me. How's that sound, un?"

"Twenty-five dollars to see you scream until your tonsils explode? Make it 75 and you've got a deal."

Kisame's jaw immediately flapped to somewhere below his knees as Itachi set a handful of Mr. Jeffersons in the center of the table, before crossing his arms over his chest and smiling triumphantly.

"Done, un!" Deidara screeched, before whirling around and gleefully stomping the rest of the way to the door. Cranked up to 'This-Will-Implode-Your-Eardrums', Mozart's "Fü r Elise" almost completely drowned out the tap of Deidara's sandals on the kitchen floor and the artist's cheerful whistling. With the ease of a child being led into a candy store, Deidara nearly skipped his way to the doorknob, snatched the opener, and flung open the barricade across the entrance.

Oh, he couldn't look. Kisame immediately clapped his hands over his eyes, grinding his teeth behind his lips nervously as the tension in the room began to climax. Sasori plunked his head into his hands, seeming completely exasperated with his teammate's utter, insurmountable stupidity.

The music abruptly scratched, and stopped entirely. There was heard the sound of Deidara giggling nervously from the other side of Kisame's blue hands, before the door slammed loudly, and Deidara came flying back to the card table, hands knitted through his blonde tresses and his sea-green eyes swirling white circles.

"Ho-ho, homygawsh! I-I-I-" the sculptor began, once Sasori had nudged his unresponsive body into a chair. Visible signs of emotional trauma, damaged virginity of sight, and the desire to tear one's own eyes out were all being displayed on the poor, trembling husk of a man that had once been dear, sweet Deidara.

"It was **_worse_** than if they'd been doing the Hanky Panky thing!" he screeched.

The three sane men at the table gazed at each other, before turning to Deidara confusedly.

"The-the-they were-"

"Spit it out, you insipid insect." Sasori prompted in an angry snarl, visibly annoyed by the Rock-nin's stuttering.

"-They were doing _rhythmic gymnastics_!"

Silence reigned supreme for about two minutes as this report began to manifest itself in Kisame, Sasori, and Itachi's minds. Zetsu, and Tobi- doing some girly spor-

"EEEEEEEGGGHHHH!!" was the simultaneous cry as all four of the men threw their hands above their heads and made wretching noises at the mental pictures the words had created. However, in seconds, they had finished gagging over the thought, and were left quietly staring at one another. Immediately, they all began to chortle at each other's horrified expressions, sniggering behind their hands and trying to hide snorts through bitten lips.

"Rhythmic gymnastics- As in, twirling around like patsies with ribbons in their hands?" Kisame could finally bring himself to ask through a chuckle.

"Yeah, un- Tobi's got on a unitard, and they were dancing away when I opened up the door. They've got one of those mats that shows you where to put your feet across the floor and everything, un!" was Deidara's response as Sasori slumped forward onto the table, sending popcorn flying up in all directions around his head.

Itachi was barely able to keep from snorting out loud, covering his mouth with one hand in an excessively feminine gesture as the Uchiha smiled evilly behind his fingers. Kisame was kicking Sasori and Deidara underneath the table, teeth clenched firmly into his lips to prevent the hysterical laughter that was begging to be ejected from escaping his mouth. Sasori, one hand over the lower half of his face, was gazing with a glazed expression, complete with a half-smile and narrowed, pumpkin-orange eyes, into space, imagining the sight of his teammates performing a waltz around the abandoned room.

"Rhythmic.. Gymnastics…" Kisame reveled, watching the other three men's lips purse and expressions go taut at the refreshed revelation.

"That would explain how they were always so sweaty after one of their 'sessions'." Itachi guffawed, shaking his head woefully at the discarded piles of cards laying in heaps on the table before each of the four.

"-And the unitards, un. Gotta do all those weird stretches before you start jumpin' around, un!"

"And the whole blaring musi-"

That was as far as Kisame got before the entire table dissolved into screams of laughter. Itachi slapped the tabletop repeatedly, sending beer bottles and burned-out Stogies scattering themselves across the light-blue striped kitchen floor, while Deidara vacuumed the mess up with the back of his cloak by rolling across the floor, huffing and sniggering as he performed a log roll across the linoleum.

In minute, Kisame had gone down hard on his back, kicking his spasms of mirth into the air and hugging his arms around his rib cage as though it would explode from the pressure of his bellowing snickers. Sasori was trying, very unsuccessfully, to contain his laughter by tucking his head between his knees and rocking back and forth. Still, muffled snorts rang from between his legs as he rocked harder in an attempt to quiet the chuckles.

A slam resounded around the table as Deidara slapped a handful of bills onto the tabletop, head bowed into the crook of his shoulder and ponytail shaking as he tried to breathe over the keens of tittering.

"Rhythmic GYMNASTICS!" the artist squealed, sending the card table into further chaos. Gay screwing had been one thing. Tobi and Zetsu shagging was one thing. But, the both of them- young, urban professional Tobi, and the cannibalistic, downright evil-looking Zetsu whom they weren't they weren't even sure was entirely human- They didn't even know how Zetsu _walked_ around with those plants on his head. Imagining him running around, waving streamers and leaping around with _spandex_ wrapped around whatever was underneath his Akatsuki robe was enough to send them all into sporadic fits of laughter. Heck, it's probably enough to send _you_, dear reader, into sporadic fits of laughter.

With a final rasp, Itachi slouched against the backboard of his chair, ponytail falling to the floor as he struggled to breathe over the wooden back of the chair. Sasori's back heaved time after time as the puppeteer failed miserably to slip once more into his guise of somber silence, while Kisame spread his limbs out spread eagle as he stared directly into the glare of the overhead florescent lights. Silence began to gather once more in the kitchenette, lacing the edges of the room with the average quiet that usually filled the entire Fortress. However, in this lack of noise, there was something present that Akatsuki's citadel had perhaps never had filling it's halls and back rooms. Something that could have only been conceived among the greatest murderers and fiends known to Shinobi-kind by the knowledge that two of their teammates were dancing the night away, instead of the supposed 'dirty dancing' they had presumed was going down between the two. Something that could only been exchanged between the four in a few, pure moments of loosing their usual hair-trigger veneers to exchange something as close to friendship as they would ever get.

The room was filled with the warmth of that ever-Sitcomed plot: Male Bonding.

"We're all pretty screwed in the head, aren't we?" Deidara asked simply, as he rolled onto his back and gazed at the popcorn ceiling a though it held the wisdom of the universe.

"No, jut you." Sasori answered, before bursting into laughter once more. He could only hope they didn't discover the DVD box he'd hidden behind the television. Zetu and Tobi were doing gymnastics, Deidara was just… Deidara, Itachi wore a pink, fuzzy bathrobe on Mondays, and he still watched old recordings of _The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee_.

Aw, hell- Akatsuki was just screwed.

**A/N: Yes. I need mental help, I know. Please review, as it pays for my medicine.**


End file.
